With the Ink Machine compromised, every soul in the studio was freed, which caused a bit of an overcrowding situation at Joey’s apartment.
A lot of calls were made to pick people up, people were given quick rundowns on how to use a modern phone, and some organization sprouted from the chaos. Even after all was said and done, there was still a chunk of people who didn't have anywhere to go. Until a van came roaring up to the driveway with the one and only WALLY FRANKS in the driver's seat. Turns out in these long 30 years he had eventually moved back from Florida to run a homeless shelter right there in New York. And he was more than willing to come and help out all of his old coworkers! Sammy, if I'm remembering correctly, went to hide in a closet at some point during this. Too many people, too much chaos, and too much Wally Franks. Joey during all of this was i THINK hiding out in his bedroom. Henry had a very cute moment in which he called Linda and she came to help as soon as she heard his voice. Soon enough, everyone had either contacted family, gone to their old homes if they hadn’t been sold, or gone with Wally until they could figure out something permanent. A very large group chat was also made as a support group type thing/resource on how to exist in the future. The only people left were Henry, Linda, Sammy, and Susie, who decided the latter two should move in with Henry and Linda, at least for a while.
There was a bit of an adjustment period of Sammy and Susie learning about the 21st century and also just trying to go back to being part of society after thirty years. Oh which reminds me–you may be thinking, hey Emmy, that math doesn’t work at all wtf do you mean 21st century, thirty years after batim is not present day, and you’re right! Logically it definitely doesn’t work out, but running a campaign in the past sounded really hard, so we’ve decided to just ignore it, the story still takes place at the same time and they were still trapped for the same amount of time, they just popped out at a time that’s convenient for us. Also on that note, pretty much everything is the same in the outside the studio world as it is in the real world today other than magic existing and there not being a pandemic, which we decided to leave out on account of it being deeply unfun. Anyway, as for magic existing, pretty much everyone agrees that it does exist, it’s just very frowned upon so no one talks about it much and its existence hasn’t changed society too much since people can’t or won’t use it on a massive, world changing scale. Right, anyway, back to your regularly scheduled summary.
Susie was having an easier time adapting and quickly started going on the internet and getting interested in programming. Sammy wasn’t doing too bad, but it was certainly an odd time for him. Besides holing himself up in his room to compose or play music, he also immediately started having beef with the Stein household’s pets, namely a goldfish named Laurence on account of his name and an evil (perfect) little black cat named Miss Kitty who Susie immediately became besties with and started teaching to do evil. Other important pets are Johnathan, a deeply lazy orange cat who literally just wants to sleep and be on someone’s lap, and Sunshine! Sunshine’s a golden retriever who failed out of service dog school and thus has all the abilities of a service dog but none of the obedience so she just opens doors and turns off light switches and stuff for fun. She also constantly alerted on Sammy for emotional distress and tried to get him to cuddle so he chills out, which he didn’t listen to most of the time. Until she physically pushes him over to lay on him. Good girl! Sammy and Susie also had to adjust to living with kids since Linda and Henry have two; Justine is 13 and took after her dad’s love of art. She also was (and still is) going through a bit of a secretive, distrustful phase, as all 13 year olds are. Mary, their other daughter, is 6 and very cute. She was really excited to have more people in the house, and is best friends with Sammy and Susie on principle.
One notable scene around this point was going to the Department of Magical Events and explaining the Situation as well as getting new documents and IDs issued. It went about as well as any DMV visit does, except Sammy couldn’t remember his birthday to tell the lady working there to put on his driver’s license and had to call Jack to ask him, which was a bit embarrassing, but at least they had their paperwork done then. They also had to go on a big shopping trip since Sammy and Susie didn’t really have any stuff, which was also a bit challenging for Sammy since he hated how shopping and clothing in general had changed from what he was used to. He refused to budge from what he had decided early in life was tolerable clothes to wear, and so he went on the hunt for dress shirts. Unfortunately due to the limited sizes in the store, and Sammy’s general lack of height, he had to shop in the kids section to find anything that fit. Which of course resulted in Susie catching him holding a good few Minecraft shirts (because someone had put them in front of dress shirts) and thus she teased him relentlessly over it.
Sammy was also having a good deal of nightmares, some of which resulted in him slipping into Prophet Mode. One nightmare, which was on the less frightening side but I promise it’ll be important later, was a room full of the smashed Bendy sculptures that had stored their souls between loops back in the studio. Sometimes this went unnoticed and people just assumed he was acting a little weird, but one time he ended up climbing onto the roof in his pajamas. In winter. In New York. A few hours and a good deal of frostbite later, Henry found him on the roof and had a heart to heart (primarily about Prophet/Sam’s feelings of not belonging, and how he was sad about not having the sense of community that the Lost Harbor had anymore) before he managed to get him back into the house and under some blankets. He also did some healing spells to help with the frostbite. A while later when Sammy became Sammy again he asked Henry if he had meant it, and when Henry asked what he was talking about Sammy asked if he had meant what he said about him being just like Joey. Henry told him he hadn’t meant it and apologized, and they seemed to reach their peace on that particular comment.
On a lighter note, now that they were back in the real world and things were looking up, Sammy and Jack started dating again! There were some very nerve-wracking dates in the beginning and awkward moments of Jack picking Sammy up and being interrupted by one meddling housemate of another, but in the end they didn’t have too much trouble falling back into things. There were lots of coffee dates as well as some movies, ice skating, and a good deal of nights in at Jack’s apartment.
On one of these nights, Sammy had three goddamn nightmares in a row (we did nightmares by rolling a luck check each time Sammy went to sleep or went back to sleep after a previous nightmare), and one of the dreams centered on Jack’s death (drowning in ink in the sewers) and the circumstances surrounding it. Jack asked what was wrong and Sammy told him about the nightmare, which was how Jack found out that while he was dying Joey had been fucking Sammy, which was, well, upsetting. He didn’t blame Sammy, but nonetheless it was a hard thing to think about and when Sammy woke up the next morning Jack wasn’t there. He had left a note that said he needed to get out of the city for a bit and get some space, but that he wasn’t upset or anything, just taking some time. He also wrote to Sammy that he loved him, which was something they hadn’t said yet. Sammy, in turn, left the song he had written Jack on the table along with a note of his own, and left the apartment to take a walk.
Unfortunately, Sammy’s luck never fails and he proceeded to immediately get kidnapped.
Some of the guys from the art department decided they wanted revenge for everything that had happened and kidnapped both Joey and Sammy. Joey seemed jovial as always despite being kidnapped and was, in an epic failure to read the room, flirting with Sammy. Sammy, on the other hand, ended up convincing the art department dudes to let him have a go at Joey, and, "competent" kidnappers that they were, they untied him so he could do so.
With the kidnappers out of the room Joey congratulated Sammy on his trickery and was promptly punched in the face. Sammy yelled at Joey for a while for everything he had done and hit him a few more times to the point that he was nearly dead (oops!), then left.
From there he went to Henry’s house to take a nap before his unfortunately-timed engagement of the night: getting drinks with Wally.
Drinks went significantly better than Sammy or I, the DM, expected. Wally just ended up being such a fun character both to play and to hang out with that he went from being a one-scene only side character to a permanent member of the party, but we’ll get to that in a bit. They had a fun few hours of sharing stories, of which Wally had many. Somehow he had done every chaotic thing imaginable in the thirty years everyone else was trapped and had some good stories to tell because of it. Unfortunately, the night was cut short when the now drunk Sammy heard a familiar sound of rushing ink, which he had heard in the studio every time the ink machine spit out some new horror, and immediately got a panicked phone call from Henry that Linda had disappeared, and not in a kidnapping way. In a literally disappearing out of thin air right in front of Henry way.
They decided to go interrogate Joey for answers but found a crime scene instead. Turns out the kidnappers weren’t that incompetent and had killed Joey. Finding it a bad time to be drunk, Sam and Wally begged Henry to sober them up with Lesser Restoration, which he did (though it was more me [Vic] begging the DM to let it work) (which I [the DM] thought was a reasonable request since Lesser Restoration does heal illnesses and the poisoned condition, which feels pretty close to being drunk). With that avenue of answers cut off, they decided to go to Joey’s apartment instead and see what they could find out. They also realized everyone (barring Wally) had heard the sound of rushing ink and figured whatever was going on must’ve had something to do with the studio.
Some investigation revealed arcane supplies and journals in Joey's closet detailing some of how he created the studio as well as his spellbook, which had the normal warlock things as well as a bunch of spells he wrote, including the one that turns blood into ink. Sammy took the spellbook and went to the others with the information that the door to the studio from Joey’s apartment could be reopened by a powerful warlock. Luckily, they had found Joey’s little black book which included the contact information for a few very powerful warlocks. Sammy called and intimidated one named Henry Wallace (remember this name) into coming and reopening the door, and with that Sammy, Susie, Henry, and Wally who had decided this seemed like fun and decided to join, stepped back into the studio.
